Diet and Nutrition - Q& A

Q-what is a calorie?

A- A calorie is the amount of heat that is required to raise one cubic centimeter of water one degree. What it is an amount of energy?

Q-How about a carbohydrate, what is a carbohydrate?

A- Carbohydrates are molecular linkages of sugar molecules. If you take a starch, which is a carbohydrate and you link those sugar molecules together. If you look at the ingredients they are always listed in the order of predominance.

In that listing you will see an ingredient called maltodextrine. A maltodextrine is a hybrid ingredient that is neither a sugar nor a starch. You know a simple sugar can be like glucose and a starch is a long chain of glucose molecules.

You link all those together and you finally get something called a starch. In between where you have the simple sugars and you have the complex substance starch you have these things called maltodextrine.

Q- What about fat?

A- You know again it comes back to the whole idea of how many units are in this molecular chain. If you break down a fat you break it down into something called a fatty acid. They can all be broken down into smaller units. In the case of starch it can be broken down into simple sugars or these maltodextrines, which can be broken down into simple sugars.

The point I am trying to make is any of these macronutrients can be broken down into smaller units. Just like starch is broken down into simple sugars, the fat is broken down into fatty acids and the proteins are broken down into peptides or amino acids.

Each one of those macronutrients can be subdivided. In the case of proteins, proteins are made up of amino acids. Not all proteins have all amino acids that are important because there are essential amino acids. If you are consuming proteins and the essential ones are missing you will suffer. You could end up with some disease because those are missing, in some cultures around the world where food isn’t so plentiful and they aren’t ingesting the right nutrients. You know one that I can think of is called Kwashiorkor.

You will see often times where little kids will have the distended tummies. The rest of their bodies are fine and it just comes down to the fact that they have a nutritional deficiency.

You know in the case of fat you can actually measure the quality of nutrients. People will volunteer to be involved in a clinical feeding trial and they will hook these people up to all kinds of measuring devices everything from body temperature to how much moisture they exhale.

They weigh and eliminate brine in their feces and they weigh it and they record everything they can about these patients. They will feed these people a controlled diet and so they will feed them a controlled amount of protein. They can measure those four elements how much is excreted and how much how much weight a person gains and basically they can determine how much of that protein is utilized by the body.

When they do that they can determine the quality of the protein and it’s based on the amino acid that makes up the protein. They can determine how well that the body absorbs protein. Then they can assign a number value to the protein and how well it is absorbed.

Some proteins are absorbed extremely well and an example would be egg albumin, which is the white of an egg rather than the yolk. The egg white protein has an extremely high biological availability and all of the essential amino acids in the right balance. You can take a protein like gelatin and gelatin has the amino acids that it is made of you will find that it is deficient in an amino acid called triptophane and because it is lacking in that it isn’t balanced. If it is combined with other sources of protein it is okay.

The bottom line is if you are looking at fat or protein it is important to look at the composition of them. You can read the declarations of the food labels and especially in snack items the protein will be there but often times the manufacturer is looking for inexpensive ingredients they can find. Often times the protein is inefficient and they don’t have the quality and are deficient in amino acids. It is important to know that all fat and proteins are made up of these building blocks and it is important to know to have a balance of all of these building blocks for the fat to be good for you and the protein to be good for you.